About OCRE
What is OCRE about?
What categories of organizations can benefit from OCRE?
What types of services OCRE offers?
What is the relation between OCRE and EOSC?
What is the relation between OCRE and Copernicus?
What is Belnet's role?
How does the referrer fee work?
Can I get more information about the framework, like selection guide, selection report, awarding criteria?
About suppliers
Which suppliers are available for Belgium?
How can I contact the suppliers?
How to know the commercial advantages offered by each supplier?
How do you sign a contract with a supplier?
When can I switch from my current provider to the provider of this framework?
What is pricelocking at Azure?
Other
How do cloud credits work?
What is Ingress and Egress?
How can I receive the OCRE Fl@sh Newsletter from Belnet?
What about Sovereign Cloud in the framework?
What is OCRE about?
OCRE (Open Clouds for Research Environments) is a Horizon 2020 project funded by the European Union that aims to enable and facilitate research institutions to use commercial digital services in a safe and easy manner. The Consortium delivering the project includes GÉANT (coordinator), CERN, RHEA and Trust-IT.
What categories of organizations can benefit from OCRE?
All organisations connected to Belnet are eligible to use the OCRE 2024 framework.
What types of services OCRE offers?
Commodity-type commercial digital services necessary for interdisciplinary research activities. Such services include:
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS):
The provision of compute, storage, network and related services and/or a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications, as a public cloud service. - Software as a Service (SaaS), on-demand software offerings:
A software licensing and delivery model in which software is used by the customer on a subscription basis and is hosted by the supplier as a public cloud service, in the areas of file storage (sync and share), online collaboration, simulation and virtualisation tools. - Earth Observation (EO) services:
Data collected by the European Earth Observation programme, Copernicus, made available through a number of Data and Information Access Services (DIAS). Data collected by the European Earth Observation programme, Copernicus, will be made available through a number of Data and Information Access Services (DIAS). The services provided by these companies range from interactive data analytics, to specific information. OCRE will enable the commercial service providers who create their front-office services on top of these back-end DIASes, to offer their services to the research community.
What is the relation between OCRE and EOSC?
OCRE will make selected commercial digital services an integral part of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), ensuring compliance with EOSC requirements and visibility in the EOSC-hub Service Catalogue.
What is the relation between OCRE and Copernicus?
OCRE will encourage more EO Services on the Copernicus DIAS, the Data and Information Access Services providing centralised access to Copernicus data and information, as well as to processing tools, enabling the research community to find and consume these services.
What is Belnet's role?
Within the framework agreement coordinated by GÉANT, Belnet takes on the role of referrer. This means that Belnet acts as an intermediary by making the framework agreements available in Belgium and facilitating the purchases of the connected institutions from the suppliers.
- We collaborate in the preparation of the tender
- We try to convince local providers to participate in the tender
- We keep our communities informed about webinars, success stories, project funding, etc., through the OCRE Fl@sh newsletter and social media
- We have a special page on our website with all the information about the OCRE offering
- We visit customers to introduce the program
- We organize webinars and live events
- We participate in working groups to better understand the current and future needs of our communities regarding cloud solutions.
- We help document mini-competitions
How does the referrer fee work?
As a referrer, Belnet receives starting July 2023 a 3% commission on the volume purchased by each organisation. However, the contractual relationship is between the organisation connected to Belnet and the supplier, there is no contract with Belnet.
The referrer fee will appear on your monthly bill of the provider. You will see the total consumption - the OCRE discount + the 3% referrer fee. Belnet will claim the referrer fee with the provider or partner, so you don't get 2 invoices. Note the referrer fee can be maximum 30K per year (cap).
Can I get more information about the framework, like selection guide, selection report, awarding criteria?
Note that the GÉANT Framework Agreements contain ready-to-use standardised terms and conditions compliant with the European Union (EU) Directive of Public Procurement (2014/24/EU).
It was published under the Dutch law and they are not obliged to share this kind of information. European procurement legislation (Directive 2014/24/EU on public procurement) is clear in this regard. It provides for 'cross-border procurement' whereby the procurement legislation in the country of publication is leading, in this case the Netherlands.
Which suppliers are available for Belgium?
The below table displays the compliant Cloud-based digital service providers who have been contracted to supply the European Research and Academic communities by means of the OCRE 2024 framework.
How can I contact the suppliers?
- Go to the OCRE 2024 Catalogue website
- Select Belgium on the map of Europe and the list of suppliers will be presented to you.
- Click on contact to send an email to the desired supplier.
How to know the commercial advantages offered by each supplier?
To find out about the different offers and discounts offered by each supplier, contact our Product Management unit.
How do you sign a contract with a supplier?
Belnet acts as a referrer and can guide you in making the right decisions and getting in contact with the right people. Contracts are signed between the institution and the partner/provider itself.
The Contract becomes effective and expires on the dates stated in the Appendix 1 and has a maximum term of 5 years, unless terminated early according to the Contract (including the GÉANT Terms and Conditions or the Service Terms).
It is up to the institution to determine how they will shape the order (Appendix 2). They can choose to purchase a specific set of services here or not to define this. Of course, a minimum value applies to all Microsoft Azure CoCs, approximately 1200 euros per year.
As you can read in the tender documents, a CoC can have a term of up to 5 years. Shorter is possible, longer is not.
Unless otherwise agreed or purchased, these are PAYG services, which you can switch off and remove and then you no longer have any consumption/costs.
Switching to OCRE2029 will always be possible.
When can I switch from my current provider to the provider of this framework?
Pay&GO contract
Pay-as-you-go cloud computing is a flexible pricing model that allows users to access technology services such as server space, software, and processing power, and pay only for what they use.
All depends from the contract you have with the current provider.
If the current contract is outside the OCRE20 framework, you need to check the commitment you took with the current provider. When does the contract end? Can you terminate it earlier?
If the current contact is within the OCRE20 framework, you should be able to switch immediately.
- For AWS and Google this is recommended as the discounts are much higher (6>12%).
- For Azure (Microsoft); as you had locked pricing in OCRE20, you might not benefit a lot as the pricing went up in the new OCRE2024 and the extra discount is very little (only 1%, so 16% instead of 15%). Note that at the end of 2025 you need to switch to the new framework as the 15% reduction of the OCRE20 framework will stop.
Cloud Credits
Data Cloud credits are digital currency that you use to pay for Data Cloud services upfront. Data Cloud pricing is consumption-based, meaning you only spend as many credits as the services you use.
You need to consume your credits with the current provider as you cannot transfer credits from one partner to the other.
Just make sure that if your credits are close to zero, that you contact the new partner within OCRE2024 to buy new credits and that your account is getting switched to the new partner to benefit from the new OCRE2024 conditions.
Note: The cloud provider usually does not play an active role in this – the customer is responsible for taking action.
What is pricelocking at Azure?
The price lock-in is present in the registrations of all Microsoft Azure resellers in all countries. The price lock-in is not present with other platforms. With the Microsoft Azure price lock-in, you should keep in mind that Microsoft Azure prices are no longer subject to inflation adjustments as outlined in MR0.
How does it work?
How do cloud credits work?
You buy upfront for a certain amount of money to use the cloud.
A cloud credit has a certain price (80-90$), which is not meaningful as depending on the price of the credit. E.g. if you buy for 100K of cloud credits, you would have more credits if they cost 80$ compared to 90$, but in the end it is just the total consumption that counts. And on that consumption, you will get the OCRE2024 discounts. So in a nutshell, you credits will not be consumed that quickly with the discounts compared to having no discounts.
Credits are usually used by the public and federal institutes. They believe that can better control their cost, but in general, there is not much difference with a pay&go contract. In both cases you need to control the cost.
What is Ingress and Egress?
For example, uploading a large dataset from your on-premises environment to cloud storage is considered ingress traffic. This process is usually free.
Egress costs refers to the data transferred out of cloud data centers to external locations. Most cloud providers charges for egress traffic.
Within OCRE2024 you have egress waivers. What does that mean?
- All R&E institutes do have a 15% waiver caped monthly at 15%, meaning if you have a consumption of 10.000 euro per month, 1.500 euro of egress traffic is for free.
- AWS and most European cloud providers do not have any egress cost, also for GROUP C.
- Group C has no egress waiver for all others like Microsoft, Google, etc.
How can I receive the OCRE Fl@sh Newsletter from Belnet?
Fill in the form to subscribe to our OCRE Fl@sh newsletter.
What about Sovereign Cloud in the framework?
Sovereignty – Definition in the context of Cloud
Depending on the data being processed and the organizational context, an organization may choose to prioritize more sovereignty and autonomy in their ICT systems. Below, we describe the different dimensions of sovereignty.
In OCRE we have 7 European cloud providers that can support data and Operational support and sometime even some technological sovereignty.
But also, Hyperscalers react to this:
Microsoft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFta9hhi0gM
https://dig.watch/updates/microsoft-outlines-new-commitments-to-europes-digital-future
AWS:
https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/europe-digital-sovereignty/
Google:
https://cloud.google.com/sovereign-cloud?hl=en
Oracle:
https://www.oracle.com/be/cloud/sovereign-cloud/
In the end the choice is up to you.
Conclusion:
The analysis of the various cloud solutions shows that a balanced approach is necessary. While public cloud solutions offer significant advantages in terms of scalability, cost savings, functionality, and innovation, they also pose risks in terms of sovereignty and dependence on foreign providers.
It is crucial that organizations conduct a thorough risk assessment, taking into account the sensitivity of the data, operational needs, and geopolitical context. A hybrid approach—where less sensitive data and applications are placed in public clouds, and critical, sensitive information is hosted in more sovereign cloud environments—will often be the recommended solution.
Additionally, implementing strong security measures such as encryption, backups, and exit strategies is essential to ensure the integrity and availability of data. By investing in a robust cloud strategy that considers both the benefits and potential risks, organizations can fully leverage the advantages of the cloud while safeguarding their digital sovereignty and security.
Finally, it is important to recognize that technological sovereignty remains a complex and dynamic issue for European organizations. Striving for a fully autonomous solution is often not feasible, but through strategic choices and collaboration, organizations can find a balance that offers both innovation and security.